Skulls in the Stars

This is the last of my daily run of blog posts for now, marking the 30th post in a row! Most of them have been on invisibility in fiction, and we wrap with a fascinating example. I’ve still got more invisibility to post, but I won’t try to do them every day…

Is there a word for finding the correct thing by mistake? That is basically what happened with the next story of invisibility to discuss, “Cloak of Aesir,” by Don A. Stuart, published in the March 1939 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction.

So why was I mistaken? Well, here’s the description of “Cloak of Aesir” from the table of contents:

A man and the Sarn-Mother and a cloak of blackness— and the old Sarn-Mothcr couldn’t hate that human enemy!

The description of the “cloak of blackness” is what caught my attention, as it certainly sounds like something invisible-y! In…

The penultimate post on invisibility in fiction in my attempt to blog 30 days in a row! I’ve got more stories to blog after that, but this will probably be the end of my continuous run.

So we’ve technically already had one story about an actual “Invisible World,” but Ed Earl Repp’s story clearly didn’t go far enough — the world itself wasn’t invisible, it just had an atmosphere that guided light around it, acting like a cloaking device. But what if the entire planet, and everything on it, were perfectly invisible? That’s the story in Thorne Lee’s “Ghost Planet,” which appeared in the June 1943 issue of Startling Stories:

Getting close to the end of my run of invisibility in fiction posts! Hope you’ve been enjoying them!

Here we take a quick look at a story by one of my favorite weird fiction authors: Abraham Merritt, who went by A. Merritt in most of his printed work. The story in question is “The People of the Pit,” which first appeared in the All-Story Weekly Magazine in January of 1918; it can be read here. I happened across a reprint that appeared in the first Amazing Stories Annual, published in 1927.

A. Merritt would regularly include invisibility in his fiction. In his 1923 The Face in the Abyss, he introduced invisible winged serpents that effectively had cloaking devices to make themselves invisible. In his 1932 Dwellers in the Mirage he introduced an entire invisible city hidden in a valley protected by a mirage.

Starting to get exhausted by all these invisibility posts! But I’m going for 30 straight days of blogging, then I’ll rest.

The scene:

In her Ohio home on the outskirts of the 26th Century metropolis of Cincinnati, Moira Presby softly hummed a current air and eagerly awaited the return of her husband who had been called away suddenly that evening on promising business. She was as happy as people of the earth were expected to be happy under the joint rule of the Durna Rangue, a semi-scientific cult, and the space pirates.

Okay, so in the future the Earth is being ruled by a semi-scientific cult, and… space pirates???

I must admit that this introduction, which explains how the cultists joined with space pirates to take over the Earth and keep out the “Interplanetary Guard,” did not leave me optimistic about the quality of “Invisible One” by Neil R. Jones…

Nearing the end of my run of posts about invisibility in fiction! Be sure to look out for my book on the history of invisibility physics next year!

One thing that is truly amazing about invisibility in fiction is how much more prevalent it is than I first thought. So many famous authors have tackled stories about invisibility, from Jules Verne to Jack London to Ambrose Bierce to A.E. van Vogt. The idea of invisibility really has a power to it that has inspired many.

With that in mind, here’s another famous author’s story about invisibility, featuring one of his most famous creations! Today, we look at “Invisible Men of Mars,” by Edgar Rice Burroughs, which appeared in the October 1941 issue of Amazing Stories.

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) probably needs no introduction, but if he does: he is the author of the Tarzan novels, which began in 1912…